National Assembly Majority leader Aden Duale has faulted the Budget committee for allocating Sh500 million to Senators for evaluating devolution.

The amount under the Senate Affairs Programme is meant to help the legislators move across their counties to monitor county projects.

Duale, in his argument, claimed allocation of resources to the two houses, as proposed by the Kimani Ichung’wa team, must be done on prorated basis.

“This is a House of 349 members against a House of 67 members. In terms of constitutional workload, this house has lots of workloads to undertake,” the Garissa Town MP said.

“The budget committee chair must declare and let us know how much he has allocated to the senate under their evaluation and monitoring budget.”

He added: “Madam chair, let it be put on record that we did not sent our member to the Parliamentary Service Commission to eat mandazis and enjoy themselves. We sent them there to ensure equity in resource allocation.”

Duale said the committee must explain to members why it would give Senators this amount of money to move across their counties.

“If he (Ichung’wa) is really a man of facts as he claims, must explain why he wants to empower senators to move around counties and not Woman Reps, individual MPs or even the nominated MPs,” he said.

Duale maintained the National Assembly must remain a house that prioritises equity and resource distribution and law making.

But Ichung’wa, in his response, refuted the claims saying there was no such budgetary allocation for the Senate Affairs Programme.

The legislator said the budget allocated to the senate is Sh6.37 billion a reduction from Sh6.41 billion.

He said some Sh250 million had been chopped from the initial Sh750 million allocated to the senate under the parliamentary staff housing programe.

“I want to put it clear as the Majority leader has requested, there is no such budget under Senate Affairs,” he said.

Earlier, the MPs had also faulted the budget committee for failing to allocate Sh10 billion to facilitate TSC to hire about 22,000 teachers.